Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:36:37 -0700

We sat in a hot tub behind the rented house up north a week and a half ago, Emily, Laurel, & I, and, though it was raining lightly, we didn't get any wetter than the hot jets of the bath swirling noisily around us: the redwood canopy seeming miles above our heads blocked the drops. And though I never at these biannual check-ins of ours feel the same degree of intention about my path since college as the others seem to -- I moved out here thinking to pursue classical viola, my hackneyed narrative begins -- I realized, under the drip of the chilly rain and soft filter of redwood branches, muscles unwinding into the warm tub, that I can stay here.

I no longer feel as though California is going to float away if I close my eyes for more than a few seconds -- I've tethered Brigadoon. Now, though, it appears that not only is this real, but that I can (and have!) make choices that keep me in it -- not only in the sylvan hedonism up through twisty roads past Guerneville, of course; but also in this playground of many-core abstract systems and whiskeyed coworkers, the locus of vegetables and new yoga studios and nearby wine.

And is this really choice, not mere luck? It must be, by reason -- Matt, Nick, and I over a bottle or two of Chinon on Friday night veered from operatic high notes to the legal precedents of the Supreme Court, but came back to a consensus on valuing pleasure equally. Again (and not only because my Dvorak typing habits have spared me from taking the GRE), I am glad I have no overwhelming passions whose pursuit requires a Ph.D.; watching friends and roommates endlessly run its gauntlet, the whole thing seems horrific, actively at cross-purposes with any sane living of life. And I say this oncall!

I feel full, even here at the end of January, of new-year's vim! Arbitrary though the division between years (decades!) may be, it's nonetheless a good kick in the ass: to clean my room; to transform these choices, heretofore subconscious (or at least, unclaimed) about living where and how I do into more intentional ones. And perhaps it's time to get that tattoo of California poppies ...